We've got BIG LOVE!!!!!!

Some time in August of 1981 when I was just 18 years old (I'm now 43), I walked into a bar and saw the most beautiful man I had ever seen....without ever knowing his name I told my best friend I don't know when, I don't how but that I was going to marry that man someday! He was beautiful!

Between 1981 and 1985 our paths crossed several times, Time would stop for a moment, our eyes would meet for a moment, my heart would skip a beat, then time would march on again....no words ever spoken. He still belonged to someone else and I always had someone in my life too. But I knew someday..........someday we would be together! He had no clue! lol

Summer of 1985 we found ourselves thrown together in the same place, at the same time and we had our first words...I asked, "Do you remember me, we met when a friend of mine was dating a friend of yours?" He remembered me and we started talking. We were at a neighborhood ball field where my Brother and he were on a baseball team sponsored by a neighborhood bar. He told me that his marriage was over and that divorce papers had been files (her part) and I had told him how I had been living in New York and had been traveling back and forth from there to Chicago (home) and Daytona Beach to escape the cold winters in Both places but now I was back for good. Again it wasn't our time to be together even though we both saw the sparks, felt the butterflies in our stomachs but ended up at two different bars waiting that night waiting for one another to walk through the door......definitely two ships that passed in the night.

On April 11, 1986 I had a message to call back a man named Jim....local number....ballsy Irish girl that I am and even though I had no idea who I was calling back.....I had just had a baby 9 weeks prior, that Baby's Father left shortly after conception (No tears shed there! lol) and for the life of me I had no idea who this "Jim" was!
I made the call, I knew instantly who he was, I threw the phone to the floor and thought.........YES! This is it, this is what my heart knew all those years ago....it was finally "OUR TIME"

April 13, 1986 we had our first date and have been together since then, along with a few bumps in the road.

On August 8, 1990 I married the man I knew I was going to marry some 9 years earlier when it first revealed itself to my heart all the way back in 1981.

So yesterday August 8, 2006 marked our 16th wedding anniversary together and we have more love and more respect and more appreciation for each other with each passing day in this life together.

So here we are in 2006 and we have 2 grown daughters which we shared with each other from the time they were 3 years of age (Melissa) and 9 weeks old (Amanda) and who are now respectfully 23 and 20..........along with two more children born to us who are now 15 (Rachel) and Jimmy (14) along with a sweet angel we lost in 1988 (Which is something so painful that I will never be able to share via my journal)

I am more in love with this man today than yesterday and I am honored to be his wife, his life long companion and his forever love........

We had our special moment alone yesterday.....Dinner, candles, no talk of cancer......but today I wanted to share it with my friends, here in J-Land.

Happy Anniversary my Love........and with the grace of God we will have many more to celebrate!.........I LOVE YOU! So here we are....some 25 years since I fell in love at first sight, 20 years after our first date, 16 years after our "I do's" and I would do it all over again just to have 25 more years of love with you!